CHAPTER THREE
The sun threatens the horizon, drifting diagonally toward the hilltops as the moist air turns amber. It's eleven o'clock at night. Birds chirp.
Bonnie River closes up the Hot Foo, casting a glance over her shoulder at the parade of drinkers she's just shooed over to the Elk's Head Lodge, to Charlie's fold. None of them gives her trouble. It's Wednesday -- Bonnie's night to drive the schoolbus out to the old town -- and everyone knows the routine. "Cheers, Bon!" croons Errol, toasting her with an imaginary glass.
Bonnie waves. He grins and stumbles.
She walks down toward the water's edge, hefting a knapsack containing her evening (Sudoku pulps, a quilt, a half-knitted toque, a vibrator, an airline-size bottle of Sherry) and her morning (eyeliner, mouthwash, deodorant, a change of clothes, and a second bottle of Sherry). She crosses the schoolyard and then bends down to fish the keys out of the magnet box stuck up inside the wheelwell of the rusted orange bus.
She knocks her knuckles on the hood as she rounds the nose, then gasps and stops short after coming up against the tall shadow of Mr. Mississauga loitering by the step. "Goodevening, Ms. River," he says.
"Holy damn," replies Bonnie, a palm flattened between her breasts. "You scared the crap out of me, Mr. Missouri."
"Mississauga," says Mr. Mississauga.
"Oh, right." She watches as he continues a slow, limping patrol around the periphery of the vehicle. She shifts her knapsack from one shoulder to the other, asks, "What're you doing there, mister? Safety inspection? I know you government guys are big on safety."
"I'm only on contract with the ministry," says Mr. Mississauga.
"Still."
"The answer to your question is no, Ms. River, I am not checking safety. I'm just looking at the bus."
"How come?"
"It's related to the case."
"What're you looking for?"
"Nothing."
"Don't you have some kind of theory?"
"No," says Mr. Mississauga as he disappears behind the back end of the vehicle. In the distance the sun is finally swallowed behind a sawtooth line of conifers. The temperature sinks with a gooseflesh lurch.
Bonnie frowns, then calls over the bus: "So you're not looking for secret compartments or nothing -- you're just looking at the bus. Just admiring it, eh?"
When Mr. Mississauga reappears around the front end, head bobbing over the hood, he asks, "Why would I be looking for secret compartments?"
Bonnie shrugs. "That's what the Mounties looked for. Their theory's that we're somehow smuggling people to the old site in the bus, then pretending to pick them up the next morning. They figured it's to get attention, drum up tourism or something. Of course, most tourists don't like to stay in lodges they disappear from in the middle of the night."
"The Germans say they've experienced nothing out of the ordinary."
"Maybe it doesn't work on Germans. We had a group up here from Quebec a couple of weeks ago and it sure worked on them. Don't Europeans have different genes from us? Maybe that's it."
Mr. Mississauga samples the depth and grit of the dust spatters dried onto the bus' bubbled-paint sides, bringing his swabbed index finger close to his eyes, then sniffing at it with his hawkish nose. He wipes the grime on his long coat, turns back to Bonnie and says, "I'm not like the Mounties. I don't use theories to hash things out."
Bonnie puts a hand on her hip. "So what do you do?"
Mr. Mississauga spreads his gloved hands. "I look at things. I listen. I hang around. I absorb what I can of the situation, then wait for my mind to show me the connections."
"You just wait?"
"Yes."
"What if it doesn't happen?"
"I wait more, or look around more. Or both."
"And then the answer comes to you?"
"Yes."
"That's a helluva method, eh?"
"We don't choose our gifts."
"I'm being kind of sarcastic."
"Yes."
Bonnie pushes the doors apart on the bus and climbs the step, tossing her knapsack on one of the vinyl bench seats. "Well I hope you're just about done because I got to get this thing moving before I fall asleep, eh?"
"I'm done," says Mr. Mississauga with a slight nod. He stands back. "Sleep well, Ms. River."
The doors fold closed and the engine coughs to life. The four-way flashers blink on in lurid red for a few seconds until Bonnie finds the switch to kill them. Then she pops the bus into gear and it chortles, spewing fumes into the purpling sky, and rumbles down the drive toward the highway.
Even though there's nobody around she uses her turn signals.
Mr. Mississauga lights a cigarette. It illuminates his face when he draws. Like bugs to a lamp, the glow attracts a couple of kids who want to bum tobacco. Their speech is unintelligible and they reek of solvents. Their hands shake and their eyes roll. Mr. Mississauga gives them a brace of smokes and ambles on.
Mr. Mississauga thinks about signals in the dark.
The diningroom at the Elk's Head is packed and noisy. Charlie is busy, a squat blur behind the bar occasionally catching the orbit of two short, stocky waitresses mutually distinguishable only by the differing patterns of their braided black hair. Smoke swirls under the lights. Somebody breaks a glass and swears. The elevated heads of the three tall Germans stand out above everyone else in the room, but it's pale and bearded Mayor MacDougal who notices Mr. Mississauga first. Behind his hand he gasps, "Keep him away from the guests!"
The waitress with braided curlicues whispers back, "He already met them, Lyle. He ate cold soup out of the can."
"Here he comes," hisses Lyle, who then continues in a louder voice above the din, "Hey, Mr. Mississaugasiss there, buddy. How's the investigation going?"
"Please do not attempt to filter my access to anyone," says Mr. Mississauga.
"What?"
The curlicue waitress asks if she can get him a drink, but Mr. Mississauga shakes his head. "Mr. Mayor, the Germans may prove integral to understanding your situation."
Lyle squints, puts his drink aside on the table and sways purposefully in Mr. Mississauga's direction, hunching low. "You have a theory, do you?"
"No."
"Oh."
"Are the Germans the first guests to remain unaffected by the phenomenon to date?"
"You're going to have to hit me with that again. I'm five in, or maybe six. What time is it? Maybe seven. How much money's left in my wallet?"
Mr. Mississauga compresses his mouth into a tight line. He says, "Sit down, Mr. Mayor," and then rotates on his right heel and wobbles off with stiff dignity.
Last call is a while away yet. Mr. Mississauga finds a seat against the wall and folds himself into it one stage at a time. The waitress with braids wrapped into buns brings him a glass of water and a menu. He squinches out his cigarette and lights another, watching the room pretend not to watch him. He makes a few notes. He observes a scuffle develop, witnesses as Charlie heads up a posse to steer the fisticuffs outside. He sees a few prostitutes working the room, two of them at the elbows of the Germans. A third girl, toothless and hard, appraises Mr. Mississauga with a quick look and decides against him, wagging her tail as she deflects her course away.
There is a bubble of void around him, the bounds delineated by fumes.
Aglakti's grandfather is back, shouting in Inuktitut at a woman passed out on the next table. He seems intent on communicating something to her: something desperate, encrypted and old.
Mr. Mississauga knows it's almost time to dream.
He makes sure nothing's burning and settles his appendages. He allows himself a slight slouch, chin resting on his chest. He takes two deep breaths.
He's gone.
His eyes look like a doll's. After a few minutes they begin to flit a little, the corneas twitching as they focus on invisible things...
"Mr. Mississauga?"
Mr. Mississauga blinks. He looks up and licks his lips. He says, "Yes?" and starts to light a cigarette, his thumb and forefinger vibrating as they manipulate the silver case. He's buying time while his waking mind takes root and gets up to speed.
"Are you okay?" asks Aglakti, frowning as she peers into his face. "You were like all catatonic or something."
"I was asleep," says Mr. Mississauga. He takes a sip of water.
"With your eyes open?"
"Yes."
"That's creepy."
Mr. Mississauga draws on his smoke and checks his watch. Charlie is pushing the last few drinkers out into the night. Lars and Klaus are nowhere to be seen, but Arnivolfe is snoring loudly, splayed out in a chair canted against the wall opposite Mr. Mississauga: a gangly teutonic analogue.
Charlie returns to mop up. He wears a Walkman with earphones, nodding his head in time.
Mr. Mississauga has a can of Scotch Broth. Aglakti makes herself a basket of fries, gravy and cheese curd. "I shouldn't eat this," she says conversationally, cracking open a frosted can of Coca-Cola. "You sure like soup, huh?"
"It's safe."
She smiles indulgently. "But does it scratch your itch?"
"No."
"Coke does, if your itch is being tired. Which mine is."
Mr. Mississauga considers this. "It's poison," he says. "But you're young, and strong. Besides, a little bit of dying is good for you."
She swabs a chip in gravy, spears a curd, swallows it. "You have to tell me, Mr. Mississauga, do you take pride in being peculiar in just about every way you can find?"
"No," says Mr. Mississauga. "But I don't fret against it, either."
"Why buck your nature, eh?"
"Yes."
"I'll buy that," she says, slapping the table. "I live that," she adds, bussing the dishes to the kitchen's ledge. "Come on," she says, "let's go upstairs. You coming, Charlie?"
"Yeah."
She sips her Coke on the landing while waiting for Mr. Mississauga to catch up. When he reaches the landing she skips up the second set of risers and waits again. "I bet you dream of running," she says carelessly.
Mr. Mississauga glances up from his efforts. "When I was a kid," he grunts.
"Not no more, though?"
"No."
"Why not?" she asks, licking a drop of Coke from the top of the can. "Did it depress you too much to hope?"
"No," says Mr. Mississauga, arriving at the top. "My dreams are busy."
Charlie's apartment is in the attic. Even gentle breezes whistle and moan through the leaky dormer windows. There are rock posters on the walls. An oval native carpet has a worn spot in the middle, and next to it is a Nintendo controller.
"Do you mind if I smoke?" asks Mr. Mississauga.
"In here?" says Charlie. "Yeah, sort of."
"I'll only have one, then."
Charlie goes into the bathroom to change. Aglakti drops onto the couch and crosses her legs, the sport fabric swishing. "I guess you don't play a lot of video games," she says.
"No."
"Maybe you should get better fingers. I've seen cool shit on television about that. I guess it's expensive though, right?"
"Yes."
"Do you want better fingers?"
Mr. Mississauga hesitates. Aglakti enjoys it. He says, "I do." Then he lights his cigarette and says, "But I manage."
"You'll need robot lungs soon, and then you really will be Darth Vader."
Mr. Mississauga leans down and taps her cola can with his immobile left hand. "You'll need a robot colon. I'll see you in Hell."
This is followed by a quiet, stuttering wheeze from Mr. Mississauga which Aglakti decodes, after a delay, as a kind of chuckle. She raises her brow and smiles.
He arranges himself in a tattered easychair, again expressionless.
Charlie steps out of the bathroom in a pair of grey sweatpants. He has a meagre wire of hair on his brown sternum, a birthmark on his shoulder. He carefully steps over Aglakti's sneakers and gives wide berth to Mr. Mississauga's smoke, then climbs up on the bed and sits there crosslegged, staring back at them. "So..." he says, "what do I do now?"
"What would you normally do, Charlie?"
Charlie tucks the edge of a magazine further under the mattress. "I'd go to sleep," he claims.
"Then go to sleep, Charlie," says Mr. Mississauga. He puts his cigarette out against a soapstone sculpture of a whale. "Pretend we're not here."
Aglakti coughs. "Yeah."
"Yeah," agrees Charlie slowly. "Okay fine."
Charlie squirms under a thin blanket and turns over to face the window. He reaches out to snap off the lamp, leaving them in the sombre red glow of the clock-radio.
Aglakti coughs again. Charlie rolls over.
Aglakti uncrosses her legs, the fabric ringing in the silence. She scratches something. Mr. Mississauga shifts and his left arm drops off and hits the ground with a thud.
Charlie sits up in bed. "Holy!" he moans.
"Maybe we could put some quiet music on," suggests Aglakti, pants swishing.
"Good idea," concedes Charlie, tucking himself in again.
Mr. Mississauga snaps his arm back into place. "I appreciate your cooperation in this matter, Charlie."
"Whatever."
They all jump when the stereo starts blaring an undecipherable jangle of pulsating drums and roaring guitar. It cuts out a second later as Aglakti fumbles with the controls in the dark, pleading, "Sorry, sorry, sorry!" Then she giggles. "Is that my tape, Charlie?"
"Yeah."
"You're sweet."
She finds a baroque cantata cut through with radio static that swells and fades in time to the faint green curtains of light colouring the night sky through the windows. Nicola Porpora's music, with accompaniment by a yellow dwarf star.
Charlie's breathing slows. So does Aglakti's.
Mr. Mississauga focusses.
The clock-radio counts the minutes. His heart counts the seconds. Out the window the stars wheel around Polaris, reminding Mr. Mississauga of the terrible speed at which the stillness of the bedroom is taking place...
A ruddy light is coming up, bleeding in from the south. Barely hidden, the sun is on its way out from behind the rim of the planet again.
Mr. Mississauga is looking at Charlie's shoulder, neck and black-haired scalp poking out from under the blanket. The folds in the bedding take on strange semblances in the weak, reflected light from the colouring sky. Parts almost seem to be moving -- and then they are, sighing downward to rest more flatly in the absence of the sleeper.
Charlie's gone.
Mr. Mississauga stands himself up and lopes over to examine the bed. He presses his cheek against the sheet: it's cold. As far as the furniture is concerned it has not been recently touched. There is no outline of a body showing in the foam mattress, no scent of new perspiration on the covers.
"I don't think Charlie's going to appreciate you snarfing his bed like that," says Aglakti.
Mr. Mississauga spins in place, then grabs the arm of the easychair to keep from toppling. "Aglakti!" he says, startled. "You didn't disappear."
Aglakti's cheeks and teeth gleam in the gathering glow. She's smiling. She delights in surprising Mr. Mississauga out of his carapace of control. "No," she replies, in vague imitation of his tone. "I don't ever go."
"Are there other townsfolk like you?"
"A few," she admits, nodding. She unfolds her glasses and pushes them onto her face. "We might as well head downstairs, say hi to my cousins. They've been getting breakfast started for the Germans until Charlie gets back. The Germans like to get up really early."
"Your cousins also don't go?"
"Three of them don't, right. Do you think it's like a DNA thing or something?"
"Does your grandfather disappear?"
"Yup. And my parents, and my brothers and sisters."
"Are you adopted?"
"Nope."
"I don't think it's a DNA thing."
Down in the kitchen two Inuit boys are wiping down the counters with disinfectant spray and another is cleaning out the grease trap on the fryer. They nod and mumble to Aglakti, ask after the sleeping giant in the diningroom. She goes into the walk-in refrigerator and returns with cold cuts, cheese and eggs for the Germans' breakfast. "Remember to make the coffee strong," she says. "They like it black."
"Okay, Aggie."
Aglakti and Mr. Mississauga go outside. The morning air is crisp and fresh, the sky gold and cloudless. Aglakti sips from a mug of instant coffee while Mr. Mississauga sips from a cigarette. S. Inlet is empty, utterly abandoned. He shoots his cuff and checks his watch. "Do you work at the lodge as well, Aglakti?" he asks.
"Me? No," she says, blowing on her coffee. "I just help out sometimes. Like anyone. I mean, we all count on having guests at the Elk's Head to keep this town going, you know?"
"The lodge is central to the economy."
"Central?" she echoes, pushing her glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose. "Damn, Mr. Miss, it is our economy -- or it was. Charlie's dad owns it and nearly everybody works for it or for the guests one way or another: Jack on the flying, Mad Bear on the hunt, Angeline at the brothel, Bonnie on lunch and sundries, Ed on taxidermy...But it isn't enough, even. We're just hanging on to watch the town die, I guess."
"Why?"
She shrugs. "Because somebody's got to stay sober to help with grandfather. Somebody stupid -- or stubborn, I guess."
"Somebody like you."
She makes a grim smile as she looks out over the bay, waves glinting in the ripening morning light. "Don't get me wrong: I'm not staying here forever," she says. "I'm not wasting my life. Sure, I'm looking after things now because that's what I have to do, but I'm not sacrificing everything for a bunch of toothless drunks. They're family, so I'm here now. But they're doomed, and I'm not going down with them."
"What will you do?"
"I'm going to bust my ass to get my demo tape played everywhere and anywhere until...until, you know, I get discovered or something. I'm getting out, Mr. Miss. Make no mistake about it."
"What's on the tape?"
"Didn't I tell you?" says Aglakti with an impish grin. "I'm gonna be a rock star."
Two hours and twenty-seven minutes later the rusted orange schoolbus grumbles over the hill and starts weaving down the coastal highway toward them. Aglakti is asleep under an awning, curled up in a ball on the lodge's verandah and snoring quietly. Mr. Mississauga has a pile of squinched out twists of rolling paper by his feet. He's rolling a fresh cigarette when he hears the bus and looks up to see its plume of dust rising from the road.
The bus stops, the brakes squeaking. The doors unfold and the town files out, bleary eyed, wearing light jackets over their pajamas and nightgowns, boots over their slippers. Parents carry their youngest, who blink at the sun and knuckle their eyes as they pout.
Aglakti's cousins come out of the Elk's Head with trays of steaming coffee, rich tea and hot chocolate.
"Bless you boys," says the skinny Venezuelan priest with a mustache that looks as if it has been added to his face with a magic marker. He helps himself to a styrofoam cup of coffee. "Is there sugar? Is there cream?"
"It's your double-double, Father," says one of Aglakti's cousins.
"Bless you."
Mayor MacDougal takes a cup of tea. "Right on, boys. Cheers. Say, where's Errol at?"
"He missed the bus," reports Bonnie, twisting the key and letting the engine go quiet. "He's hoofing it. He'll be along in a couple of hours."
"Crap. He's supposed to buy me breakfast, eh?"
"I'll buy you breakfast, Lyle."
"You're my heroine, Bon."
"Okaip."
The scene has the thoughtless certainty of routine. The cluster of citizens mumble their goodbyes and head their separate ways, plodding sleepily along the streets of their abandoned town, on missions to get breakfast going or get back to bed to catch another few hours. They chase dogs away from their garbage cans and push in through their unlocked doors.
Mr. Mississauga smokes. Mr. Mississauga watches. And when his next dreaming comes, he will make the connections.
